Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by L. M. Coulson

  “What about his collar, and the pain I felt in him?”

  “Well,” Thyrian said, addressing Alaric, “did you confront Eyren to get his side of the story?”

  Alaric shook his head. “He wasn’t in his rooms, and he didn’t mention to his guards where he was going. But we’re supposed to spar tomorrow morning. I’ll ask him then.”

  “Kaern could be killed the moment he loses his usefulness,” Vylaena protested. “What happens if there are no more ether-touched left in Enserion for him to find?”

  “That sounds to me like the bigger problem,” Alaric interjected, tossing an apologetic glance at Vylaena. “As much as I don’t want Kaern wrongfully imprisoned or forced to use his Knack against his will—and we will sort that out, Vylaena; stop glaring—the ether-touched are disappearing and we finally have a lead . . . except that lead is my brother.”

  Alaric frowned, shaking his head. “But why would Eyren do something like that—why would he be kidnapping them, or having them killed, or whatever it is that might’ve happened to them? It makes absolutely no sense. I know him. He would never do anything like that.”

  “We need to find out what’s happening to the ether-touched once Kaern tracks them down,” Thyrian replied. “If we can figure that out, perhaps other questions can be answered. And when Eyren returns, you can confront him about Kaern.”

  “We need to get Kaern out of the dungeons,” Vylaena protested, her tone daring refusal. “If Alaric can’t pardon him or whatever it is you princes do, then I’m going to break him out.”

  “And what if he did kill that girl?” Thyrian asked. “What if he told you he was innocent so you’d feel compelled to rescue him? Would you free him simply because he’s useful to you, no matter what he’s done?”

  Vylaena held Thyrian’s gaze with a stare so hard and heavy and tense that Alaric wondered if one of them would simply combust.

  “Thyrian’s right,” Alaric said, turning to Vylaena. “I don’t want to keep Kaern locked down there if he’s innocent, but the truth is, we just don’t know for sure. We should spend our energies finding the ether-touched.” His tone softened. “We could use your help in that regard.”

  She turned away, staring across the river.

  Alaric sighed and faced Thyrian, his lips thin. “I have a fitting to attend. Then Father’s rounded up some bore of a noblewoman for me in the hopes I’ll be so beguiled by a pair of breasts that I’ll forget to interfere in his running of the kingdom. But we should meet later, for further discussion.”

  Thyrian nodded. “Of course. I’ll await your summons.”

  ✽✽✽

  Thyrian watched the prince depart, Alaric’s shoulders square and his back straight as he retreated back towards the castle. He wondered if Vylaena could sense Alaric’s true feelings beneath that stoic facade, and then realized she wouldn’t care. Thyrian wished he could be of more use to his friend, watching Alaric until he disappeared into the palace.

  “Maybe you were right,” Vylaena murmured, just barely audible over the cry of seagulls circling above. “I am afraid. A little. Of getting involved in things. People . . . take advantage of compassion.”

  “No one is trying to take advantage of you,” Thyrian replied, turning toward the river but maintaining the space between them. His heart pounded; he couldn’t believe she was confiding this to him. “Neither Alaric nor I have any intention of putting a collar around your neck. You will always be free to make your own choices, no matter what we ask of you.”

  “Mmm,” was all she said, her face unreadable.

  Thyrian waited for her to continue, to expand on her thoughts, but she said nothing. They lingered at the wall, staring down at the ships passing below, until their stomachs began to growl and Vylaena suggested they retreat to the kitchens.

  Except someone was waiting to intercept them just inside the doors.

  ✽✽✽

  “I’m sorry,” Flinx said, taking a seat in Thyrian’s sitting room and glancing at Vylaena. “I should have sent a message, or—”

  “You don’t need to apologize,” Vylaena said. She stood at the center of the room, one hand resting on the pommel of a dagger, her forehead still shining with the evidence of her morning exertions. Thyrian took a place at another couch, wondering if Vylaena’s protective position between the tense librarian and the door was a conscious choice. Her instincts were good, regardless—and she’d impressed him again with her skill on the sparring field. Even more so with her relentlessness; she knew she couldn’t beat him, and yet she’d never stopped trying.

  Flinx gave Thyrian a hard look, twin creases appearing at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t mean to be rude, but—”

  “Prince Thyrian can be trusted,” Vylaena pressed, her tone solid and cool. Oddly comforting, too—in the way a confident, experienced captain could be to the men in his command.

  But the thought lingered only briefly; he was more amused by the fact that the librarian—Flinx, he corrected himself—trusted a Shadowheart mercenary but not him, a sun-crowned prince and friend of Enserion’s future king.

  “I told you there was a book I saw on . . . on Lorist Rynley’s desk,” Flinx began, turning from Thyrian to meet Vylaena’s even gaze. “Well, he was my mentor, and after . . .” Her face twitched in pain before smoothing once more. “It’s my task to sort through his things,” she finished. “I found the same book hidden among his belongings, along with several other journals of notes and research he’d been compiling over the past year or so. All on the topic of the Breaking Stone.”

  Flinx paused. She swept a stubborn coil of hair from her brow, her fingers brushing over the golden lines of her Mark, stark against the umber of her skin. “We know the Stone was used to torture Ikna, but it was never clear to me exactly what that meant, or how it was done. No one knows what the Breaking Stone really is.”

  “But this book—these journals . . . you found the answer?”

  Flinx nodded. “The Stone is more like a soulstone than I thought. It does strange things to ether, but it has other uses as well. It’s able to unravel power from one entity and infuse it into another.”

  “I’m sorry—what’s this Breaking Stone?” Thyrian asked.

  Vylaena turned to him briefly enough to say, “An ancient relic made by Emperor Tygnon.”

  Flinx licked her lips. “I thought it might still exist, and Rynley evidently thought so, too. There was an old poem, tucked between two pages, that claims the artifact was housed deep within the Keening Grottoes, wherever that may be. Rynley underlined the phrase, and I saw he noted it in one of his journals, too.”

  Thyrian glanced at Vylaena, noting how still she’d gone. She didn’t seem keen on unnecessary—or what he was certain she considered frivolous—expression, but this was an entirely new level of calm. She radiated steel in every mannerism: straight, solid back, pursed lips, set jaw, frozen shoulders.

  Not a single hair moved on an errant draft. Even her eyes seemed to harden, the shifting grey of her irises icing over as he watched her.

  “That wouldn’t have any relation to Keening House, would it?” she said.

  Flinx blinked rapidly. “I certainly hope not. Or else the Stone would’ve been discovered ages ago, don’t you think?”

  “Keening House?” Thyrian asked. The name meant nothing to him.

  “There are tunnels beneath Cyair,” Flinx explained, turning to him. “Not only the sewers, but deeper places. Enserion’s Assassin’s Guild is housed there. People call it Keening House for the mournful wails you can sometimes hear echoing from the depths if you draw too near . . .”

  Vylaena snorted, breaking her composure. “Local superstition.”

  “Regardless,” Flinx continued, her voice wavering, “there’s something else I needed to tell you. Something,”—her eyes flitted to Thyrian again—“much more sensitive.”

  Thyrian’s stomach twisted. He’d seen that look before, during his raids in the Desert Kingdoms. “If you’re afraid
for your safety,” he told her, “I’d like you to know that I’m a guardsman first and a prince second. I took oaths when I joined the Order of the Golden Aegis. And Vylaena, well . . .” He glanced at the woman still standing guard in between Flinx and the door. “You know how she is. If you need us to—”

  “No,” Flinx said quickly, shaking her head. “But I thank you. It’s . . . it’s probably just nothing—just paranoia, after Rynley’s death.”

  “It’s not nothing if you sought me out,” Vylaena pointed out.

  Flinx was quiet a moment, staring down at her hands as though they were a source of comfort. When she raised her chin once more her face had cleared. “It’s Prince Eyren,” she said. “He came to the library to ask me questions.”

  Thyrian and Vylaena shared a glance. “What questions?” Vylaena replied.

  “Things about Rynley. I told you . . . Rynley was helping him with some kind of research.” She licked her lips. “Eyren asked me if Rynley had been working on anything that might’ve been dangerous or would give anyone cause to harm him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Well. The Stone is considered a taboo subject, but it’s not innately dangerous,” Flinx continued. “So I told Prince Eyren that I wasn’t entirely sure—since Rynley never shared his research with me—but that I thought he might’ve been looking at an old relic.”

  Flinx shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “He kept prodding. What relic? I told him. What does it do? Transfers power. Where is it hidden? Keening Grotto. He seemed . . . interested, but slightly forced. Almost like he already knew the answers. And then he asked me a question that made my bones freeze beneath my flesh.”

  “What?”

  “He asked,” Flinx replied, “if it was possible to use the Stone to steal a goddess’s power. And how to do it—theoretically.”

  Thyrian glanced at Vylaena, who was already staring at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “You’re thinking it too,” Vylaena retorted. She narrowed her eyes on Flinx. “So, is it possible?”

  “I suppose . . . but how could you even consider it?”

  “Not we,” Vylaena corrected. “Prince Eyren.” Her lips tightened. “How does the Breaking Stone work? How exactly does one harvest a goddess’s power?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s what I told Prince Eyren when he asked. That I don’t know, and I have more pressing matters to attend to than daydreaming about a relic that probably crumbled centuries ago.” She let out a breath. “I lied. I lied to him about my interest, about how I knew Rynley had done this research for him, about the fact that I’d been researching the Stone, too. I don’t know why.”

  “Because he’s a shady creep,” Vylaena said.

  “He seemed . . . relieved,” Flinx continued, the crease between her brows deepening. “Like he’d reassured himself of something. And then he told me that I was probably right; that the Stone was probably just a legend, and that I was smart to spend my time working on more worthwhile pursuits. And then he said I should keep what I do know quiet, for there are people out there who might use that information for nefarious ends. Like, perhaps, whoever killed Rynley.”

  “That bastard,” Vylaena spat. “He probably killed him himself.”

  “Careful,” Thyrian warned her. “That’s a serious accusation. And you forget he was at the king’s banquet with us at the time of Lorist Rynley’s murder.”

  “Flinx,” Vylaena continued, ignoring him, “we learned that Kaern is being held in the palace dungeons, courtesy of Prince Eyren. Kaern has been locating the ether-touched for him. For about a year. Do you have any ideas as to why he might want them?”

  Flinx was quiet a moment, processing this. “If he’s not killing them, or selling them into service abroad—which does sometimes happen—then I can only . . .” She raised her eyes to Vylaena’s and they were round with apprehension. “To have access to as many ether-touched as we’ve recorded missing . . . can you imagine what they might be forced to do? What they might be forced to make?”

  It was the wrong thing to say to a woman who’d been held captive and tortured because of her own Mark. Thyrian eyed Vylaena, waiting for her to lash out with a scathing reply.

  But she did not.

  She breathed—out and in—and in that breath Thyrian felt something shift around him. It was a disturbing feeling, like the rumbling tremor of an earthquake and the sudden knowledge that the floor beneath his boots wasn’t as solid as he’d thought. The air around him almost seemed to bend, arching toward Vylaena as water spirals down a drain.

  Then she let that breath go, and the feeling was gone.

  “I’m glad you came to me,” Vylaena said to Flinx. “You’re going to need to be careful. It’s obvious that Eyren has his hands in something nasty, and he could be dangerous. You know more than is safe, Flinx.”

  Flinx nodded, her expression grave.

  “Make sure someone’s always with you when you work. Do your research in the library and take someone with you when you need to go to your office. No more wandering around alone. At least until we figure this out.”

  “I will. And I’ll keep researching,” she promised. “If someone’s planning to use the Breaking Stone again, we need to know how to stop them. The power of a goddess? I’d rather not find out what the prince would do with that.”

  28 | The Princess

  To Thyrian and Vylaena’s mutual chagrin, Alaric’s summons later that afternoon came in the form of a formal invitation to dinner—not another banquet, thank the goddesses, but a private dinner in the king’s own dining chamber. There would still be a few important guests in attendance, however, and Vylaena would have to wear proper formalwear.

  She tore up the invitation and tossed it into Thyrian’s fireplace, swearing an impressively colorful string of obscenities under her breath as she retreated into her chambers.

  When Thyrian was finished dressing and decided it was safe to cross into her room to fetch her, he found that she’d merely worn her usual leather cuirass over a plain black gown that brushed the floor. It actually looked rather nice on her, he thought, suiting her in a way that silken tent she’d been forced into at the banquet hadn’t quite matched.

  “If they want me in skirts, I’ll wear a damn skirt,” she muttered to him as she shoved a dagger into one of the sheaths at her hips.

  He swallowed his laughter and followed her out the door, suppressing the urge to offer her his arm. He’d been away from the Galiffan court for much of his adult life, but his formal upbringing still reared its head sometimes. The thought of Vylaena allowing anyone to escort her arm-in-arm made it very difficult to keep from smiling.

  “What’s so amusing?” she asked him, her leaden eyes flashing in his direction.

  He just shook his head and turned down the hall.

  The king’s chambers were well guarded, but the silver-plated men stepped aside when Thyrian and Vylaena approached. A young steward opened the doors for them, bowing them inside, and a second steward escorted them through a set of tapestry-strewn halls to the king’s dining chamber.

  “Castles within castles,” Thyrian heard Vylaena murmur under her breath, a touch of disdain darkening her voice. He was inclined to agree; Enserion’s people might claw each other to pieces over a piece or two of lynd, but their king sat quite comfortably in his secluded halls.

  The well-oiled doors swung open noiselessly, revealing a generously proportioned dining room. The centerpiece was an elaborately carved table: polished and set with hand-painted dinnerware, it rested beneath a miniature version of one of the ballroom chandeliers. But Thyrian barely noticed the table, or the chandelier, or the tall, clear-paned window that took up most of the far wall. Instead, his eyes found and fastened upon a young star-born woman standing beside Prince Alaric.

  “Brother!” the woman cried as she caught his eye, a brilliant smile erupting over her flushed cheeks. She rushed forward, arms wide, and embraced Thyrian as though he were
a lost sailor found washed upon the shore.

  Thyrian held the woman in return, but he blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend how she could be here, in the king’s dining room. “Caeslin?” he said. “What are you doing here?” Goddesses. She should not be so far from home. Not with everything that was happening.

  King Arnyel, who’d been in the midst of conversation with two courtiers Thyrian didn’t recognize, turned and approached him. “We welcome another Galiffan into our midst today. And a hearty welcome she has!” He gave Thyrian a pleased grin the prince wasn’t quite able to return.

  Alaric approached from the other side as Thyrian disentangled himself from his sister’s embrace. Alaric’s face was pleasant and mild, but there was a tension at his jaw Thyrian could pick up even through the prince’s carefully controlled expression.

  “Father,” Alaric explained in a light tone, “arranged for Caeslin’s visit, in the hopes your sister and I might join houses.”

  Thyrian stared at Alaric, his gut clenching. Caeslin? Marry Alaric? This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d asked for an alliance. He’d wanted a treaty, not to sell his sister to a foreign monarch—especially to a kingdom where mercenaries and assassins ruled the streets!

  “Don’t look so forlorn, Thyrian,” Caeslin said with a warm smile he’d greatly missed, reaching up to smooth his hair. “I’m a grown woman, you know. It was going to happen someday.”

  Thyrian shook his head to clear it. Caeslin had a Knack for charming those around her, but he didn’t want to be lulled into a false serenity. He wanted to shout at the king, berate him for putting his sister in danger, and drag Caeslin straight to a carriage home.

  Be calm, Thyrian. You have an audience.

  “Of course,” he managed to say. “I’m just shocked to see you here. You must’ve left not long after I did.”

  “Not at all,” she replied with a feminine chuckle, her green eyes bright. “King Arnyel arranged everything. I came by journey-stone. Nasty way to travel, but quick. I left only this morning.”